Health care reform turns personal
Tiffany Stanley/Religion News Service
Issue date: 7/19/09 Section: Divine Intervention
WASHINGTON - It's wedding cake season, but at one Minnesota bakery, the boss has left the building to attend to other business.
Lynn Schurman struggles to provide health care for her 65 employees at Cold Spring Bakery and she wants Congress to know about it. So even with 23-tiered cakes on order for weekend nuptials, Schurman recently hung up her apron to join 500 faith-based activists to push health care reform on Capitol Hill.
Their goal? Pressing Congress to provide a so-called "public option," essentially a government-run insurance plan, in the upcoming legislation.
"As a member of a faith community, I believe it's part of my obligation to provide health care to my employees," said Schurman, a Catholic who lives in Cold Spring, Minn., population 3,000.
Little else has stirred the health care controversy more than the Obama administration's support for a public option, which would put a government insurance plan on the market to compete with private insurers.
For those wanting "single-payer" insurance - which would put the government in charge of nearly all health insurance plans - the plan does not go far enough. Private insurers fear just the opposite: that their days are numbered once a government plan wreaks havoc on the competition, leaving a slippery slope towards socialized medicine.
Schurman, a member of St. Boniface Catholic Church, said health care reform reflects the Christian ethic of helping those described in the Bible as "the least of these." It also "goes right to the heart of Catholic social teaching," she said.
The lobbying push was organized by the Gamaliel Foundation, a Chicago faith-based social justice group that once trained a young street organizer named Barack Obama.
Volunteers from 19 states that are home to Gamaliel affiliates kicked off their day of prayer and protest at a Lutheran church in the shadow of Capitol Hill. The Rev. James Forbes, minister emeritus of New York City's Riverside Church, gave the send-off sermon.
Lynn Schurman struggles to provide health care for her 65 employees at Cold Spring Bakery and she wants Congress to know about it. So even with 23-tiered cakes on order for weekend nuptials, Schurman recently hung up her apron to join 500 faith-based activists to push health care reform on Capitol Hill.
Their goal? Pressing Congress to provide a so-called "public option," essentially a government-run insurance plan, in the upcoming legislation.
"As a member of a faith community, I believe it's part of my obligation to provide health care to my employees," said Schurman, a Catholic who lives in Cold Spring, Minn., population 3,000.
Little else has stirred the health care controversy more than the Obama administration's support for a public option, which would put a government insurance plan on the market to compete with private insurers.
For those wanting "single-payer" insurance - which would put the government in charge of nearly all health insurance plans - the plan does not go far enough. Private insurers fear just the opposite: that their days are numbered once a government plan wreaks havoc on the competition, leaving a slippery slope towards socialized medicine.
Schurman, a member of St. Boniface Catholic Church, said health care reform reflects the Christian ethic of helping those described in the Bible as "the least of these." It also "goes right to the heart of Catholic social teaching," she said.
The lobbying push was organized by the Gamaliel Foundation, a Chicago faith-based social justice group that once trained a young street organizer named Barack Obama.
Volunteers from 19 states that are home to Gamaliel affiliates kicked off their day of prayer and protest at a Lutheran church in the shadow of Capitol Hill. The Rev. James Forbes, minister emeritus of New York City's Riverside Church, gave the send-off sermon.
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jacksmith
posted 7/19/09 @ 9:14 PM EST
AMERICA'S NATIONAL HEALTHCARE EMERGENCY!
It's official. America and the World are now in a GLOBAL PANDEMIC. A World EPIDEMIC with potential catastrophic consequences for ALL of the American people. (Continued…)
daily news
posted 8/02/09 @ 3:10 PM EST
More on latest daily news - there is broad support for a package of reforms and regulations for the health insurance industry that would provide real protections for consumers and at the same time level the playing field for health insurance providers. (Continued…)
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samueljaxon
Custom dissertations
posted 2/21/10 @ 11:24 AM EST
Thanks for great news!
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